I want to hold your hand
by sxcond
Summary: Severus Snape dreams of hands interlaced.


Falmouth Falcons

Chaser 1

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MAIN PROMPT: S3R11 / Tops of the Pops - I Want To Hold Your Hand - The Beatles (Choose one lyric or line to base your fic upon) : LYRIC: "I want to hold your hand."

PROMPTS

01\. (song) 'Mad World' by Gary Jules: LYRIC: And I find it kinda funny, I find it kinda sad  
The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had

02\. Stranger

03\. Prod

WORDS: 1094

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Severus Snape dreams of hands interlaced.

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"Lily," he breathes.

She's sitting on an ancient bar stool in the Leaky Cauldron, at a table so stained over the years by dozens of mysterious alcohols that it reeks of rum. Purple, blue, green, and a faint red that seems like a bloodstain caused by a drunken fight than an alcohol stain — all the colours of the sky are spread on the table, and all are dull. Perhaps it's because the years have washed them out, or perhaps it's because everything seems _less_ next to the bright blood-red of Lily's hair.

"Sev," Lily calls cheerily. "Come join me!"

He inhales; exhales. It's all so confusing. He doesn't quite know what to do, because last he saw her, she was hardly this amiable. Last he saw her, he'd called her a Mudblood, she'd said she'd hated him, and then she'd vanished from his life like an extinguished flame.

(He's never admitted it but he misses her. Since she's been gone, he's turned colder. His being has become jagged, like icicles, like his acquaintances who've learnt to murder in cold blood.)

"Very well," Severus says after an awkward pause. He sweeps his robes out of his way in an effort to seem effortlessly cool and sits down beside her.

Now, juxtaposed to her, the differences between them are brought into stark contrast. His robes are pitch black, skin pale, sallow and hair, yet again, black—he's practically a monochrome study. Meanwhile, she's wearing a yellow Muggle sundress with her rosy frost-bitten cheeks stretched into a smile.

A gale of winter wind blows by and the curls of her hair move like some living, fiery creature. He sits stolidly beside her, his hair limper than the dead.

She's alive and he's not. She's happy and he's not, because though she's right beside him, their closeness is only a physical one. Look close enough, and you'll see the miles and miles of distance between the two strangers.

Severus wants to touch her. He wants to bridge the distance. The longing in his heart rings louder than a caterwaul and he wants to hold her hand.

"How have you been?" Lily asks.

"Fine."

She laughs. "What's got you in such a mood?"

"The dunderheads I have been coerced into teaching—what else?" He snorts.

"Sorry Sevvy, I haven't taught anyone before so I'm afraid I can't help you with that," Lily says. She sips her firewhiskey. "How's Harry been doing?"

"Acceptably."

Smoke puffs out of her ears. "That's... Has he been trying at least?" Her hand which lies across the table like a resting beige cat is soft and delicate. He wants to hold it.

"I can't say that he's been doing his best, but I can state the reason why he hasn't. Often," Severus begins silkily, in a pleased tone, "he holds _absolutely_ scintillating conversations with Weasley instead of paying me the proper respect I deserve.

"Why that little—" Lily fumes. "I'll be certain to give him a proper scolding later. He knows he should be listening in class, and yet—"

Severus smiles in triumphant astonishment. No one has taken his side in years. The shock is like touching a cattle prod, but it's still a pleasant feeling. Suspicion arises a moment later. Nothing good ever happens to him without something equally horrid occurring in return. Case in point: Lily. He'd loved her, and oh, how wonderful it had felt until she died and the space where he held her in heart turned hollow.

Died. The word echoes in his suddenly hollow heart. Or had it always been hollow, but he'd forgotten it was for a moment?

He reaches across the table to hold her pale, slim hand. "You're dead, aren't you?" he whispers. He feels _Deja Vu_ ; he feels—he feels—

Like he's dying again.

"I'm sorry," he says.

"I love you," she says instead and smiles.

It's a dream come true and all too much for him to bear.

He kisses her and she kisses him back. Soon they're romping on the table, and all thoughts of death are forgotten. Severus feels like he's dying as he kisses her lips, then cradles the tender skin of her neck and kisses it too. He worships her. He loves her, loves her, loves her, and though he feels like he's withering away, he's alive for the first time in aeons.

They make love on the bar table, on the floor, in a Leaky Cauldron room. At the end of it all, they are lying on a bed in a naked embrace. His arms go awkwardly around her, and her spine juts against his heart. Still, they are together, no matter how vague of a ' _together'_ it may be. Because he knows she's married to James, though this Dream-Lily might not care, and the dead and the living can never be together.

At the end of it all, their hands are interlaced.

"Hey, Sevvy?" Lily asks softly. "Why are you crying?"

 _Because you're dead,_ he wants to say. _Because I killed you, because your son can never measure up to your brilliance, because you chose Potter over me, because you're not real, because I want to hold your hand but I can't so I'm dying,_ I'm dying _._

A tear hangs off his chin and drops down into his heart.

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All goes black. He feels the wet tears on his cheeks. He's woken up, and his surroundings are dark, which means it's still night. But he can't go back to sleep.

He thinks of Lily's soft palm in his, a cat's paw inside his spidery fingers, and yearns to grasp it again. But her hand is buried six feet under, already decayed, and so is any chance of ever holding her hand again.

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Stranger dreams he has dreamt than the one from last night, but no sadder dreams have he dreamt than that one.

And since last night, he has wished everything that had happened between he and Lily was all just a dream.

At least, the blasted dream is simply a dream and will, like dreams do, be forgotten soon.

Snape doesn't think he can bear it if it had been a memory. If it had been real. Everlasting. Ingrained into his mind, forever. Because it would have been, if it had been a reality. He knows that every moment with Lily he has experienced he has never forgotten and never can forget.

' _And I find it kinda funny,'_ he thinks, sobbing, ' _I find it kinda sad; the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had.'_

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End file.
